


hello, it's me

by allhalethekings



Series: hello au [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Future Fic, M/M, Pining, Post-5A, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allhalethekings/pseuds/allhalethekings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's when Stiles is sitting on the hood of his Jeep on a warm, quiet night that he finally understands. It’s dark around him, the silence of the night only interrupted by the faint rustling of bushes and trees from behind and small little squeaks from little critters. He’s managed to drive up to the small hill deep within the Preserve, one that’s tall enough to loom over the rest of Beacon Hills so he sits there, revelling at the sight in front of him. There are hundreds of lights glittering below him, belonging to Beacon Hills, lit up in a stark contrast against the dark night. The full moon shines above the down, bright and pearlescent, appearing as though it’s watching over the town.</p><p>It’s then that Stiles understands.</p><p>Derek didn’t leave because he wanted to; he left because he had to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hello, it's me

**Author's Note:**

> For [sinyhale](http://sinyhale.tumblr.com) because she was having a not-so-great week and she gave me way too many Hello Adele feels for Sterek purposes. 
> 
> Post-5A compliant in that it only follows canon up to when Stiles killed Donovan. It diverges almost immediately afterwards. 
> 
> The accompanying GIF can be found [here](http://hales-republic.tumblr.com/post/132921172508/for-sinyhale-because-i-noticed-you-were-having-a)
> 
> Title is obviously inspired from the song Hello by Adele.

It was a rough Sunday evening when Stiles, Scott, Kira, Malia, and Liam get back to Beacon Hills from Mexico.

They’re all shaken up, bruised and battered from their injuries from the Berserkers, so throughout the entire ride back into California, the mood is somber and quiet. Nobody says anything more than what’s necessary; Kira murmurs directions to Stiles as he drives but other than that, it’s silent.

More than once, Stiles finds himself glancing into the rearview mirror and staring at Malia as she gazes out the window. There’s a slow churn in his stomach that he’s been feeling ever since Mexico and if he’s being honest, he knows why. There was something about seeing Derek being flung like a doll by the Berserker and then having to watch as it stabbed Derek relentlessly until his ‘death’.

In that moment, nothing else existed around them and nothing else mattered. There was blood coming out from every orifice on Derek’s body and Stiles couldn’t do anything about it this time. He couldn’t hold Derek up in eight feet of water, couldn’t cut off his arm to save him, couldn’t punch him awake. Stiles couldn’t defend him from the Berserker or couldn’t even hold his hand as Derek took what Stiles thought to be his last breaths. He couldn’t do anything but stand there, frozen in place as Derek took laboured breaths that barely enabled him to breathe.

In that moment, Stiles’s heart stopped, beginning to beat only when he saw the majestic black wolf leap at Kate from the shadows.

And it was after the whole ordeal was over, after Derek and Braeden left in search of the Desert Wolf, that Stiles began to understood how he really felt.

It was a rough Sunday evening when they all get back home because after a particularly exhausting car ride home, Stiles breaks up with Malia when he drops her back home. He says he doesn’t feel the same way about her and she nods because she knew. She’d seen the look on his face when he thought Derek was about to die, knew that she would never be able to compete with that.

They part ways in perhaps the most mature way possible all things considered but when Stiles goes home and lays in bed, every part of his body sore and aching, he can’t help but feel there’s a big part of him missing.

As days fade into months and then years, the ache in his muscles subsides but ache in his heart remains.

 

Thing is, he considers calling or texting Derek multiple times. He’d been keeping in touch with Braeden so he knew where Derek was but they never once talked about him. Stiles never asked and Braeden never volunteered.

Stiles almost calls him when Theo rolls into town along with the Dread Doctors. He wants someone to believe him about Theo, wants the reassurance that only Derek could give him that he’s not being crazy or paranoid or untrustworthy. He wants Derek to look at him in the eyes and nod and say he’ll look into Theo.

But he doesn’t call.

The next time he almost calls Derek is when he was forced to kill Donovan to protect his dad. Again, the urge to reach out to Derek almost takes him over and every part of his body wants to just pick up his phone and dial in the ten digits he’s practically burned into his mind. He spends days shaking over what he’s managed to do and every time he looks at Scott or his dad, he almost tells them everything but holds back if only because he’s not sure either of them understood what it would mean to have to protect yourself and the ones you love by any means necessary - even if it resulted in murder. They’d look at Stiles like he was broken, something that could no longer be fixed, like they don’t even recognize what he’s become anymore. In the end, Derek is the only one who could understand what it felt like to kill out of sheer necessity.

And yet, he doesn’t call.

Over the course of that year, even when things get uglier than they ever have before, Stiles almost picks up his phone and calls. But he holds himself back every single time. At first he doesn’t understand why. He thinks maybe it’s because he’s hurt that Derek left them to rot in this town, maybe it’s because Derek thought their lives weren’t worth his blood, maybe it’s because Derek just didn’t want to hang around a bunch of teenaged werewolves.

But it’s when Stiles is sitting on the hood of his Jeep on a warm, quiet night that he finally understands. It’s dark around him, the silence of the night only interrupted by the faint rustling of bushes and trees from behind and small little squeaks from little critters. He’s managed to drive up to the small hill deep within the Preserve, one that’s tall enough to loom over the rest of Beacon Hills so he sits there, revelling at the sight in front of him. There are hundreds of lights glittering below him, belonging to Beacon Hills, lit up in a stark contrast against the dark night. The full moon shines above the down, bright and pearlescent, appearing as though it’s watching over the town.

It’s then that Stiles understands.

Derek didn’t leave because he wanted to; he left because he had to.

Beacon Hills had become a toxic hole for Derek; everywhere he looked, he was surrounded by the death of his sister, of his family. He was surrounded by the ruins of his family home, knowing nothing but destruction and pain and strife in his time. Beacon Hills had slowly poisoned Derek like a slow acting strain of wolfsbane and Derek had taken the only action he could to survive. After all, that’s what Derek knew to do - survive.

So Stiles never calls; he won’t let himself be the reason of Derek’s ruin. Wherever Derek is, Stiles hopes for nothing more than his happiness.

 

Eventually, they all make it out of high school, alive and well.

Liam and Mason are of course still have a couple of years to go but the rest of them are ready to get out. Scott and Kira settled on UCLA, finding it difficult to go too far from Beacon Hills. Lydia settles on MIT because duh, math. Stiles gets accepted to most of the colleges he applied to as well. He’s almost set on attending Berkeley because he doesn’t want to leave his dad to fend for himself  but then his dad finds his acceptance to Cornell and tears up his Berkeley letter in a second. He looks at Stiles like he can’t believe he’s raised such an idiot and tells him firmly but sweetly, “Pack your bags, kid. You’re going to Cornell.”

And that’s that.

 

His first few nights in Ithaca, it’s quiet. There’s no demons, no kitsunes, no werewolves. Well, none that he can tell anyways. There’s a small supernatural shop tucked away into a corner down the street from where he lives; to the untrained eye, it seems like just a normal occult shop but Stiles knew the second he walked in that it was anything but. The elderly couple who ran the shop peered at him inquisitively as though they were trying to decide what to do with him. In the end, Stiles walked out with an enchanted dreamcatcher, a vial mixed with sage, vervain, and rosemary, and a job.

Ithaca is colder than what his Californian body can take so during his first week, he goes to the nearby mall and stocks up on sweaters and cardigans and hoodies. He gets a cozier blanket than what he’d originally bought from home and at the insistence of Bethel and Frankie - his new (somewhat supernatural) bosses - he begins to drink tea specially made by them. They had told him the tea would help with the chilly weather and the nightmares and although Stiles had given them a doubtful stare at the time, he had to thank them three dreamless weeks later.

Occasionally, Stiles goes out with his roommate to a few parties here and there, talks to guys, talks to girls. He keeps the numbers they all give him saved in his phone, texts back only those whose faces are oddly symmetrical, covered in artful stubble, and who look like they can pick him up and toss him over their shoulder in a flash. He tries to forget who his string of one night stands bear a striking resemblance to, tries to lose himself in their breathy moans and wandering hands and tight holes. He never stays past morning and never kisses them goodbye.

His life in Ithaca is good. It was the perfect distance he needed from Beacon Hills; there was nothing close to a Nemeton in town and the closest Stiles ever came to hearing the term ‘telluric currents’ was when he mistakenly sat down in the wrong classroom in his first week. For the first time in Stiles’s life since Scott was bitten and his world turned upside down, Stiles could breathe, free and easy. It made him wonder if that’s how Derek felt when he left Beacon Hills too.

Soon, September faded into October and then November and before Stiles could give it any thought, it was Thanksgiving. Sadly, he had neither the money nor the transportation to go all the way back to Beacon Hills and his dad was too busy to break away for a weekend so instead, Stiles hopped on a train to visit Lydia for the weekend at MIT. There was a tightness in his chest that loosened at the sight of her beatific smile and not before long, they were curling up on the couch together marathoning through the seasons of Friends on Netflix.

“You ever miss it?” Stiles asks that night, eyes trained on Lydia’s flat screen TV. Unlike other freshmen, Lydia had opted to live on her own right off the bat; it’d be highly awkward if she awoke her roommate one night from a less-than-pleasant screaming incident.

Lydia stays quiet for a while. “I miss all of us being together,” she says finally. “I miss the friendship, the love, the caring, the drama—“ Stiles laughs outright at that and Lydia gives him a smirk. “I don’t miss the horror.”

“Me either.”

They fall silent again, letting the familiarity of six best friends living in a city larger than life wash over them.

“Do you ever miss him?” Lydia’s voice is soft, inquiring yet cautious, like she’s not sure if she should even have said anything.

Stiles takes a shaky breath, refusing to look at Lydia in the eye if only because he’s afraid he won’t be able to hide anything from her. Not that he ever could. He looks down, his fingers fidgeting together in his lap almost out of instinct.

“All the time,” he finally settles on saying.

“But…?”

Stiles gives her a wan smile. “How’d you know there was a but?”

“There’s always a but with the two of you.”

“But I try never to think about him,” Stiles murmurs. “If I start thinking about him, I start thinking of everything that could have happened. Everything that could have changed our lives or at least the trajectory of our lives.”

“Would you ever want to call him? Text him?”

Stiles looks at her, sadness burrowed in his eyes. “You ever felt like calling Jackson?”

It’s her turn to look vulnerable and Stiles almost wants to take back the question because they hadn’t talked about him in years now for a very good reason.

“Jackson leaving for the right thing for him. He had a lot of terrible things happen to him and because of him. The guilt he would have faced by staying in Beacon Hills would have suffocated him eventually,” Lydia says. She looks away but Stiles can notice the glassiness of her eyes.

“Exactly.”

The conversation comes to an abrupt end then and both of them shift just a little closer to each other, wrap the cosy blanket just a little tighter, and turn their attention back to the reruns.

The rest of the weekend passes easily.

In the wake of Lydia’s mention of Derek, Stiles fiddles with his phone throughout the entire ride back into Ithaca. He would play around with his phone, unlock it, click on the Contacts app, scroll through the list until he landed on Derek’s name, open the contact picture Stiles had snuck a picture of, and then after a few moments, close the app and unlock his phone. Rinse and repeat throughout the entire ride home.

Like always, he wonders if he could maybe send a simple text because it was just Thanksgiving after all.

In the end, Stiles decides not to. Like always.

 

The rest of the college year flies by in a haze of sleeping, studying, working, and when he can manage to have a life, socializing.  

When the time comes, he straps down to a desk in the library and studies until his eyes fall shut and his head thumps down on his open textbooks in preparation for final exams. His hard work pays off thankfully and he finds himself sitting back and relaxing on the flight back home for the Christmas holidays. His dad picks him up from the airport and Stiles hugs him for a solid two minutes before letting go. It goes without saying that he’s missed his dad more than anyone else. On the ride back to Beacon Hills, Stiles fills his dad in on all his adventures - not that they didn’t spend an hour or so on the phone every few days when he was away but somehow, he still manages to find things to tell his dad about.

His dad, on the other hand, fills Stiles in on all the cases he’s had over the past few months. He tells Stiles how ‘normal’ it’s been and how that feels unnatural after all this time. All the crime now seems easy, boring, routine. He doesn’t have any crime scenes to cover up and there hasn’t been an attack on his life - or job - in months. He’s not sure if he should be relieved or cynical. Stiles snorts but nods in agreement. He doesn’t have the answer to that either. They spend the day lounging around the house and setting up the house for Christmas. They pull out the tree from the attic they’d bought after Stiles’s mom passed away and aside from putting it up in the living room, they leave it untouched. After his mom had died, Scott and his mom always came over on a weekend and they all decorated the tree together, taking time in stringing the lights around it and gently placing each treasured ornament on each branch. It was the only way Stiles and his dad wouldn’t spend the day miserable, their chests tightening with hurt and sorrow and guilt.

Scott and Kira come home a couple of days after Stiles does and that following weekend, Scott and Melissa show up at their doorstep bright and early in the morning, each carrying a tray of food. They have breakfast together, feasting on eggs, bacon, and the works, before spending the rest of the day delicately unpacking all the Christmas ornaments his mom had bought for them and hanging them up one by one. Once upon a time, a day like this would have been void in laughter and happiness; with Scott and Melissa, that void ceases to exist.

Before long, it’s Christmas day and his dad is shaking him awake.

“Wake up, kiddo. Normally you’d be downstairs already tearing through the wrapping paper,” his dad chuckles. Stiles twists away from his dad, groaning as he pulls his blanket over his face.

“It’s still sleep time! The presents will still be there in an hour,” he mumbles into the pillow, already planning to fall back to sleep but his dad doesn’t let up.

“Oh how the tables have turned,” his dad replies dryly. He shoves at Stiles again but this time yanks the blanket off Stiles and walks out, laughing, the warm and comfortable blanket dragging behind him. Stiles groans into his pillow again but gets up nonetheless.

Ten minutes later, his dad is handing him a warm cup of hot chocolate made with nutmeg and a hint of cinnamon with four perfect marshmallows floating on top. They gather around the Christmas tree and start distributing the presents. As far as Christmas presents go, his dad and him have developed a simple tradition. When Stiles was younger, he’d get three functional, useful presents along with one frivolous one. Usually that meant he’d get a couple of games for his Xbox and the rest would be things like thick socks, warm sweaters, and a new set of pyjamas. This year is no different. He get two pairs of holiday-themed socks, a beautiful (obviously homemade) dark burgundy wool beanie, and a couple of sweaters for very obvious reasons.

Stiles grins, loving the feel of the thick wool beanie in his hands. “This is amazing, dad. I love it!” His dad grins, winking in return.

For his part, he’d gotten his dad a cookbook on healthy but delicious vegetarian recipes (which his dad accepted with a painful smile on his face), a pair of winter boots to replace the current worn-out ones, and a few old records for the record player he still has in his room. Overall, it was a great Christmas and the spend majority of the day lazying around like they used to when Stiles was younger.

“Are you meeting up with the rest of the pack for your little gift exchange?” his dad asks during a commercial break of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

“Yeah, we’re gonna meet at Scott’s in an hour,” Stiles answers, getting up. He stretches his body, leaning back to loosen up the heaviness of his stomach after all the eating. “I’m going to head up to get ready, kay?”

His dad waves him away, already stretching out his legs over the part of the couch where Stiles was just sitting.

An hour later, Stiles pushes through Scott’s front door, arms full of presents. The second he walks in, his ears fill with loud, rambunctious laughter and joy. It fills his heart with happiness and he grins to himself. Stiles missed this; being far away to Ithaca certainly gave him the freedom and peace he desperately needed but being back around his pack gave him the felicity he’d never get without them.

“Stiles!” Kira squeals, running over and practically jumping at him, almost toppling them both over. He laughs at her because well, some things never change, and she grins sheepishly but helps put all the presents under the tree. Stiles looks around; he’s the last one to come apparently so he settles down on the floor beside Liam.

“Man, it is so good to be back around you guys,” Stiles laughs. “I missed you morons!”

“Hey!” Scott says, affronted but it’s layered with fondness.

Lydia sniffs. “Excuse you, I’ve already gotten a meeting with the Head of the Mathematics Department to discuss research into the field of game theory and how it can apply of evolutionary biology.”

Stiles laughs again, leaning up to kiss her on the cheek. “I wouldn’t doubt that for a second, my princess.”

There’s food and drinks on the coffee table and he’s content for the first time in a long while. But as he looks beyond the piles of five different bowls of chips, three types of gourmet dips, and a stash of sodas and beers, he can’t help but notice the absence of a certain someone. Stiles loses himself to his thoughts, heart aching under his ribs, and suddenly, he’s overcome with an onslaught of guilt at being able to celebrate Christmas like this without Derek. It feels wrong, somehow to celebrate being so joyous without the one person who’d continuously brought himself in the middle of crossfire to save their asses. It gnaws at him, slow and deep, makes him wonder where Derek is, what his Christmas must feel like.

Is he lonely? Is he stuck in some crappy motel room still running after the famed Desert Wolf? Is he even alive? And if he is, does he ever think of them? Of Stiles? Of Beacon Hills? Does he ever miss them?

Lydia elbows him back into the present and he’s surprised to notice that there are no less than seven presents in front of him, all wrapped in various states of skill. One by one, they take turns unwrapping each gift, laughing and screaming at each other when they correctly (or incorrectly) guess who gave each present. It takes them almost a half hour to get through all of them but it’s when Stiles notices he still has one present left that he realizes he has seven presents but there’s only six of them. He stares at the neatly wrapped box in confusion but then a second realization occurs and he notices everyone else also has a similar looking present in front of them with identical looks of confusion on their faces.

Stiles looks around the room, mentally counting each head. Scott, Kira, Lydia, Malia, Liam, Mason. There’s six other people in the room but they all have seven presents instead of six. Lydia’s the first to come out of the stupor and she lifts her present delicately, twirling it around in her hands. All the presents are wrapped in brown paper wrap so they’re painfully simple and boring and bear no sender’s name. The only writing that’s on each box is an elegantly scripted name for each particular box.

“Hey, do you think—“ Scott begins, confused eyes flitting to Stiles. It dawns unto Stiles in a heartbeat and his heart begins to pound louder than ever. Scott raises his present, bringing it close to his face and inhales deeply. He nods. “It’s faint but it’s there.”

_Derek._

Stiles runs his fingers over the brown paper wrapping, a small smile stretching over his lips. At least this means he’s alive. They all stare at each for all of one second before simultaneously tearing into their gifts, making surprised sounds when they see what they got. Unlike the others, Stiles unwraps his gift carefully, methodically. The present feels somewhat heavy in his hands and it’s not until the wrapping paper falls to the floor that he sees what he’s received. Stiles huffs out a laugh. He’d gotten three books, a small silver keychain of a wolf howling at a moon, and a small handful of polaroids.

Without meaning to or any explanation, Stiles gets up and walks into the kitchen, holding his gift from Derek close to his chest. Scott and Lydia give him knowing looks but don’t call him out on it.

Stiles slides into a chair at the tiny breakfast table in the kitchen, gently placing his pile of presents in front of him. He fingers at the keychain, delighted in the smooth surface of the moon and the gorgeous detailing of the wolf’s fur. Next, he goes through the books and he’s surprised to find that two of them are fictional books and one is what looks like an old leather-bound journal. He flips open the journal first, wanting to save the polaroids for last, and notices a small note tucked away in between the first and second pages.  _This is my family’s bestiary. Hope it helps,_ it reads. The handwriting is the same elegantly loopy handwriting as on the presents. Stiles picks up the second book,  _The Giver_  by Lois Lowry, and is delighted to find yet another message.  _This book reminds me of you, a spark of colour that brightens the world around you._ The last book is called  _The Humans_  by Matt Haig; inside, the message reads,  _This book helped me find my happiness. I hope it helps you find yours. -Sourwolf._

Stiles put the books aside with shaky hands, surprised when he feels his eyes watering. He blinks quickly, rubs the would-be tears away from his eyes. He reaches out for the polaroids last. There are ten in total; nine of them are of various sceneries. There are shots of mountains, of trees, of perfect sun rises and even more perfect sun sets. The last one, however, is different from the rest. It’s a picture of the all-too-familiar black Camaro gleaming in the sunlight against a beautiful backdrop of mountains but that’s not all that’s in the picture. There’s a guy seated on the hood of the Camaro, leaning back on his elbows and even though Stiles can only see the back of his body, he has no doubt in his mind that it’s Derek. Even in the blurriness of the photograph, Stiles can see how relaxed Derek feels now, free from the burden he’d carried on his shoulders for years. His shoulders, once always hunched in tension, are now wide and loose. It’s the perfect image of a carefree individual revealing in the beauty of nature.

Stiles runs a finger over the print, releasing a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. He flips it over, surprised to find yet another message and it’s one that finally eases the worry Stiles has had in his chest for all this time over Derek. It simply reads,  _Hello from the other side._

This time, Stiles doesn’t hesitate.

He gets his phone from his back pocket and without stopping to think about the what-ifs, he dials Derek’s number and waits in bated breath.

After a couple of rings, Derek picks up. “Hello?”

Stiles breathes in, slowly and deeply. “Hello, it’s me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up at: [tumblr](http://hales-republic.tumblr.com) // [twitter](http://twitter.com/halesrepublic). 
> 
> Send me prompts, flail with me over Hoechlin's eyes, let's be friends - the whole shebang.


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